


gods always look like the people that make them

by Rayellah



Series: Self-Indulgent Genji One Shots [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Mixed feelings, ambivalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 20:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10343841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rayellah/pseuds/Rayellah
Summary: she occupies him as a shapeless hunger





	

**Author's Note:**

> i like gency in theory, but i don’t like how fans of the ship always gloss over the issues inherent, such as the negative feelings genji canonically had toward his very existence for quite some time after he was brought back from the brink of death, and the negative feelings i feel he must have had toward mercy for at least some of that time as well (i tend to suspect ambivalence, that multifaceted love-and-hate-in-equal-parts, at least for a time, before he comes to peace with things). 
> 
> while i don’t believe that such negative feelings are _insurmountable_ , that genji is destined to feel negatively toward angela forever, it is canon that it took him years to be at peace with his body, and since i couldn’t find any fics exploring negative-feelings-becoming-positive, i decided to just write this myself. anyway, my $0.02.

Genji does not know why he answered the recall. It would be easy to say he did it out of a sense of justice, because he felt that Overwatch could do good in the world, like it once did (it didn’t always), or to say that he still felt that lifedebt pressing down on his shoulders (he doesn’t always).

The truth is: he knows things are changing. And he wants to see what happens next.

He even tried to talk his brother into joining… in his own way. But Hanzo is stubborn, he has to think it’s his own idea. Genji doesn’t mind-- his brother will come around, or he will not.

For the time being, he has his master along. Overwatch was welcoming of Tekhartha Zenyatta, more so than he thought they might be, considering the fact that Overwatch was first founded to kill omnics… but they have been accepting of Genji, and he feels more machine than man these days.

For obvious reasons.

The monastery is far off, and Gibraltar is warm. He can feel it on his face, and nowhere else. His master cannot feel it at all, or at least not the way humans can, all nerve endings and temperature-words.

He stands outside the base, as high up as he was able to climb, and turns his face away from the sea breeze. There are people associated with the former Overwatch he hopes not to encounter again, due to how much they know of his family, his condition, his personality-- and some he knows he will not, due to their departure from this world. Captain Amari, Gérard Lacroix, and quite a few others. Soldiers and scientists he worked with, on and off. Whom he considered friends.

For now, Genji contents himself with not seeing anyone, familiar or otherwise, and takes a seat, as high up as he had been able to climb. He will imagine that he is alone.

For as long as he can, anyway, for eventually he will come back inside, and his master will remind him that he is not.

\--

On the anniversary of his death, Genji went home, which is what he had been dreaming about -- Genji went home, the way he told himself he would, over and over and over again. All he wanted was to go home. All he wanted was to see if he could forgive Hanzo.

He could. He did.

He bested his brother in combat and did not kill him. He told Hanzo to come with him.

After, he sat in his old bedroom in Hanamura, looked at his folded hands, the way they are clean of blood. The room was very quiet. This is all he had ever wanted. All he wanted was to go home. He’s happy. This is what he wanted. All he wanted was--

\--

Genji does not go home. Genji does not have a home, now. His childhood home is not home any longer. Genji is, as far as anyone is concerned, as dead as he could ever be. There is nowhere for Genji to go.

Really, there’s only one option left to him.

He’s already dead, isn’t he?

\--

_“You were supposed to be different!” Dr. Ziegler wailed in despair, watching him -- his eyes the only human-like thing left within him, and even those not completely there, anymore; she was watching the way he moved like an origami bird misfolded. “You were supposed to be human.”_

_Genji’s head tilted to the side, less like something organic, and more like rusty machinery. “And it is my fault, Dr. Ziegler, that I’m not?” He didn’t snap it, didn’t snarl it, merely asked, like he really wanted an answer._

_Maybe Genji dreamed about killing her, once, when he was dragged by her caduceus staff and incredible technology back from the brink of death, maybe he didn’t. Hands around that throat. Shuriken in her eyes. Maybe in his dreams, he thanks her, even if that puts him in debt, because he’s already in debt. Maybe he just says_ you can’t leave me, Angela, _says_ Never leave me, Angela. _Maybe he wants a friend, from her. Maybe he doesn’t._

_You’d have to cut him open to see, scrape the insides of his veins with scalpels until you see what secrets are lurking in there._

_After all: Genji was only what he had been created to be, by Overwatch. By the Shimada clan. By Hanzo. By their father. By Dr. Ziegler. By the dragons. By everyone except himself, really._

\--

Genji awakens from that dream with the same ease as one might slip out of quicksand-- which is to say, very little. Rest doesn’t do him much good, anymore. He doesn’t feel like a _person_ anymore, hasn’t since… _well_.

You know.

He feels like a weapon. He feels like a knife or a gun. He feels tired.

A weapon but… Genji is not Hanzo -- as a child, he would try, many times, but he would never be Hanzo. He is not Hanzo, and the coliseum bones of his chest do not contain a wolf’s howl.

He looked up to his brother, as a child, but Hanzo’s first thought had never been keeping Genji safe. His first thought had only ever been keeping Genji.

Discontent with that thought, Genji readies himself for the day-- easier than it once was. No clothing to select, no breakfast needed. He ends up in the canteen anyway, of course. _Congregation builds comradery,_ someone used to say. Winston and Lena have a table all to themselves in the middle of the room, the two of them helping themselves to enough of Reinhardt’s cooking to feed an army all alone. Winston’s heaping plates Genji understands-- after all, a gorilla needs many times the caloric intake of a human, but Lena’s? She has almost half of the accumulated food to herself. Where is it _going_? Genji considers making a joke to that effect, but decides against it. What if Lena takes it the wrong way?

He doesn’t know where he stands, anymore. He’s not sure he ever did.

Breakfast is a smaller affair than it was before the fall of Overwatch-- even among surviving former members, the thought of violating the law is a bit of a deterrent, isn’t it? Former members seem to mostly be staying away, and there’s not a new face in sight, though Winston assures them that he’s in talks with new potential members, that he’s _sure_ he has a few who would leap at the chance to join Overwatch.

Genji takes a seat at a table by himself, with a juice box, because liquids are easier for his system to process. His master is in the midst of morning meditation and Genji hadn’t wanted to disturb him, so Genji sits alone. Perhaps he can suggest an earlier time for meditation, so Zenyatta can grow familiar with the team through communal breakfasts. He’ll think on the best way to bring it up.  
He’s glad he has yet to run into Angela.

There is no _direct goal_ , this time, to distract him from confronting the tangled thoughts he has about her, to confront that ambivalent point halfway between gratitude and hate. No goal, no grand monster for Genji to fight, no purpose for him to cling to, no future for him to live through. There is just this: an endless succession of small tasks, pulling the organization back out of the shallow grave Reyes and Morrison left it in.

What that means: he will have to see the good doctor sooner or later. It’s going to be difficult to avoid.

\--

It is, in fact, later that day, when Angela becomes impossible to avoid. Genji keeps the conversation light, a touch above familiar. Like they’re merely acquaintances. Like they could ever be acquaintances after everything that has happened between them.

“Are you doing well?” Angela asks. And Genji nods.

“I am adjusting,” he says, and leaves it at that. He says nothing more, because if he does, Angela might press, might ask for more, and Genji has no desire to explain, does not wish to say that he would be gnawing at his fingernails, if he still had any. That he would like to plant a seed of thought in the hollow of Angela Ziegler’s throat, hope the roots would reach her, be impossible to rip out. That he wants to be impossible to rip out.

Genji says, _I am adjusting_ , because it’s easier than: _I want to be impossible to rip out._

\--

 _So Genji helped Overwatch destroy the clan. Wood splinters, and he thought:_ I am not what I have been made. I am better than what I have been made. _Not only that but he thought:_ I am better than those who made me. I am so much better than those who made me.

_And he left._

_After that, he left. Overwatch had nothing left for him, in the end. And after its fall, less than nothing. He left, and he wandered, no-name-no-home, just Genji and his weapons, Genji-the-weapon._

\--

“It was not… right,” Genji says. “The things you did to try and help, they were not right for me.”

“Genji--” Angela starts, and -- and god, she’s beautiful. The eyes and the hair and the tilt of her eyebrows. It would be so easy for Genji to say _never mind_ and kiss her. The pull of Angela, like gravity.

“I know -- I know you care for me, Angela,” Genji says, “I do. But it was -- it was an idea of me. It wasn’t me, and you cannot keep putting ideas and ideals first. You choose concepts over people, Angela, and that-- frightens me. I am afraid.”

It has always frightened him, if he’s being honest. Since he met her, the woman who saved his life, dragged him back _into_ life (same thing, right? Same thing, really, right?), he has been overwhelmed by the passion she has for her ideals. It’s a lot like drowning. 

\--

She feels like that moment between total void and one’s eyes adjusting to the dark. For someone who dresses in such light, soft tones, he finds it an ironic, but not inaccurate, comparison.

People have described looking at her like staring at the sun, but Genji has always found it a different sort of blinding.

\--

Genji learned to drown before he learned to swim, as a boy. He took to swimming slowly, and only managed to keep afloat without flailing after weeks and weeks of practice. It isn’t something that has ever come naturally to him.

You know this story already. It goes like this: flailing and coughing and lungs full of seawater.

\--

He doesn’t want to feel as though he owes her, for giving him back his life. He knows she doesn’t see it that way, knows she sees it as a doctor’s duty, an experiment for a good cause, to save a life, but he feels it. The way _thank yous_ are admittance of debt owed. He doesn’t want it to feel that way.

It does, though.

His younger self would have cut to the chase, discussed with Angela any concept of debt. Made sure the slate was clean, that he didn’t owe her a thing, but he isn’t that man anymore. That man was rougher around the edges, more rebellious, less subdued. That man hadn’t met the mellowing presence of his master, had not felt debt pressing down on him (not from Angela, admittedly but from the organization she served), still believed Hanzo would protect him from anything. He was, quite simply, different.

It wasn’t easy to slip back into who he was. And anyway, he almost feels as though he’s never _not_ been who he is.

It aches and aches, in his heart. In what’s left of his human-parts. Every organic piece of him aches.

\--

_(And the doctor returned home to Geneva, not knowing that her creations, both of them, the cyborg and the wraith, wished to pursue her with a terrible vengeance, because the doctor had never showed her creations any love…_

_Hah… is that why, do you think? Is that the only place vengeance can come from? Love? The lack of it? Is that the sort of story that this is?)_

\--

“Angela, I--” he begins. She cuts him off.

“You have been avoiding me, Genji. I don’t want any negative feelings between us, if we’re to be working together. Overwatch is much smaller than it once was, we don’t have the luxury of avoiding one another.”

“I don’t want to feel in debt.”

“Have I ever made you feel that way? I assure you--”

“No. You have not. It is nothing you have done. Still, I feel resentful.”

“I understand.”

\--

She does, did, always has. 

\--

He doesn’t know what caused the shift, when he started feeling content in her presence. Comfortable. Safe, even, if one could apply that word to a situation wherein one knows logically that one could come to very little harm. A medbay is not an unsafe location, generally, and this one even less than others, with Overwatch’s enemies under the impression that the organization has disappeared.

So he has no reason not to feel safe, and yet the safety he feels is something to remark upon. Perhaps because the woman typing away at the console in the corner has not always been a source of safety. Perhaps because a watchpoint, medbay or barracks or anywhere else, has always stirred in him a sense of agitation and anxiety.

“Angela?” he begins.

“Hm?” she prompts him to continue, not looking up from the console, from her work. Research and analysis, concepts Genji lacks the scientific background to comprehend.

“Thank you,” he settles on. He does not say for what.

To Angela’s credit, she does not ask. He likes that about her. 

\--

“You seem more at peace, my student,” Zenyatta says, and Genji smiles despite himself.

“I have taken your lessons to heart once again. I forgave someone else today.”


End file.
